Advertising

'Halo: Combat Evolved' - v1.0.9 Patch Available NOW

Halo, enhanced for play on the PC, contains all the action-packed combat and thrilling gameplay that made it a smash hit. Armed with a new arsenal of weapons and vehicles, Halo delivers challenges and surprises as well as intense online multiplayer competition exclusively for the PC.

Prevents buffer overrun errors and also removes the requirement for a CD rom at startup.

Fixes for server-crashing security bugs.

Several external programs may not work, resulting to game-crashing.

Halo PC 1.0.7.0615 Update

This 1.0.7.0615 patch addresses the exploit currently being abused to make Halo servers unresponsive.

Halo PC 1.07 Update

The Halo for Windows v1.07 Hotfix addresses a rare hang that could occur if a malicious individual (hacker) purposely imitates a game server and sends invalid data to a server. This hot-fix changes the version number of Halo for Windows and the Halo for Windows Dedicated Server to v1.07 from v1.06.

Halo PC 1.06 Update

This file contains information to about the Halo PC 1.06 Update and the history of Halo PC updates to this day.

Halo PC 1.06

The Halo for Windows v1.06 Hotfix addresses a rare crash bug that could occur if a malicious individual (hacker) purposely imitates a game server and sends invalid data to clients who try to browse the server list. This hot-fix changes the version number of Halo for Windows and the Halo for Windows Dedicated Server to v1.06 from v1.05.

NOTE: Due to an incompatibility discovered between some systems and the updated Auto-patcher released with version 1.05, users of 1.05 will have to manually download an updated Auto-patcher 1.06 and run it from the Halo directory to receive this latest update. Users updating form prior versions can auto-patch from the game. This issue is addressed for any future patches beyond 1.06.

Users of HaloPC 1.0 through 1.04 will receive the normal auto-update message, however a change in the auto-updater will require users of 1.05 to follow a special manual-update procedure:

If you are running HaloPC 1.05, follow the following precedure to update:

Save the following file to your game directory, such as c:program filesmicrosoft gameshalo. Overwrite the existing file. Remember to "save" this file, don't try to "open" it directly from the website.

Now that the file is saved, run it. If you receive an error message, such as that strings.dll was not found, you probably didn't save it to the location where the game was installed.

Allow it to download the full 1.06 patch and install it. You're done!

Halo PC 1.05 (a hotfix version)

No feature changes, just two fixes:

1. Security fix to prevent a malicious user from being able to shut down the game on the server (never yet exploited, that we know of)
2. Fix for the XP SP2 problems as noted in my other recent thread on The Maw forum here on www.bungie.net.

Halo PC 1.04

The GameSpy Security update (update v1.04) for Halo for Windows addresses a rare crash bug that could occur if a malicious individual (hacker) purposely
tries to exploit the GameSpy CDKey SDK. This update changes the version number of Halo for Windows and the Halo for Windows Dedicated Server to v1.04 from v1.031.

Halo PC 1.031

- Fixed the crash on startup bug relating to the intro movies.
- Anisotropic filtering is now NOT on by default.
- Saved games prior to 1.03 are now no longer compatible. Any levels that were unlocked as you progressed through the game are still available, but your checkpoints will be reset.

Halo PC 1.03

Halo PC 1.03 is our first update to address some of the most important issues that have arisen since the game was released. Our goal with this patch was to
1) improve the quality of the online experience for gamers and 2) address the most frequent issues gamers run into. This update is also our first opportunity
to improve our networking architecture with some of our learnings from our hours of online play. Here is a summary of what's new in Halo PC 1.03.

Note:All updates to the Halo Dedicated Server are documented in the Halo Dedicated Server Readme file, which is available here: Halo Dedicated Server
1.03 Readme

Improving the Quality of the Online Experience for Gamers

Addressing Team Killing

Servers now have a complete team killing / banning system that should significantly reduce team killing online. The concept is simple: team-kill a number of time and you will automatically be banned from the server for a period of time set by the server administrator. Because team kills can be accidental, the concept of grief also exists: following a team-kill, if you don't team-kill again for a period of time, you are forgiven for your team-kill. These settings are customizable by the server administrator(s) using server console commands.

In addition to the system above, players are no longer penalized for being killed by someone on their team and respawn time penalty for a team-killer is multiplied by the number of teammates he killed, rapidly leading to very long respawn times for team killers.

Improving the Quality of the Online Experience

We've made a number of updates and bug fixes to our networking architecture, the most important one being specifically in how we transfer / predict player's movement / position as well as the action of reloading your weapon. While going into the details of these changes is beyond the scope of this document, the
result should be a smoother online game experience across the variety of connections to the Internet.

We made the following changes to our user interface:

* Servers name now supports 65 characters for dedicated servers and 32 characters for client-hosted servers and now accepts an extended character set.
* Chat text length has been extended to 64 characters
* In-game scoreboard now displays every client's ping
* In-game scoreboard now displays your # of assists
* Server port numbers are displayed accurately throughout their range

Additional Online Multiplayer New Features:

* Teams are now persisted for the next game when map cycling occurs
* Map Reset: It's now possible to restart the current game without requiring the server to map cycle.
* Assault: We now have a timer to keep track of how much time is left to your offense / defense round
* Assault: Alongside this timer, we also have an "Offense" and "Deffense" indicator to quickly inform you of your role

Addressing the Most Frequent Issues Experienced by Gamers

Many users have reported problems with Halo PC when using 3rd party software to force the refresh rate of their monitor. We have changed how we handle this
situation in our code to seamlessly fall back to the forced refresh rate.

A significant number of reported game crashes are related to an external library called keystone.dll. We have updated this library to address the most common failures. These crashes would usually occur when changing screen resolution, when starting or quitting Halo PC, when chatting in a multiplayer game or when using ALT-TAB to minimize Halo PC and return to Windows.

Additional Bug Fixes

* Halo can now be bound to a specific IP address using the -ip command line agrument. (facilitating multiple NIC support for Halo Dedicated Servers)
* Halo can now read/write data files to a user specified folder using the -path command line argument. This is particularly useful for Halo Dedicated Servers but also be be used for users whose "My Documents" folder is remapped to a UNC path. It is an advanced option and using it will force you to manually
move saved games and multiplayer gametypes.
* Online Multiplayer: Telefrag message is now appropriately replicated.
* Online Multiplayer: Minor fixes to switching teams in kill-in-order games
(scorew will now remain accurate)
* Online Multiplayer: Minor fixes to the end of the game state (new players now have to wait for the game to be restarted before being admitted to the server)
* Online Multiplayer: Fix for clients flashlight states when joining games
* Online Multiplayer: Vechicles won't respawn if they have a projectile (such as a plasma grenade) attached to them. They will wait for the projectile to be
removed.
* Online Multiplayer: Minor fixes to using teleports for high-latency connections

* Sound: Fix for cinematic dialog being cut out on certain cards when enabling Audio Hardware Acceleration in the Audio Settings.

Halo PC 1.02

With Halo PC 1.02, we are adding support for multiple instances to our dedicated server, enabling us and the community to roll out many more servers for gamers. We are also introducing client support for RCon (Remote Console), allowing dedicated server operators to have control over their servers running
in data centers. For more information on the Halo PC Dedicated Server and the Remote Console, please consult the Halo PC Dedicated Server Readme file located here:

Halo PC Dedicated Server 1.02

We have also released the Halo PC Technical and Performance FAQ, which answers most frequenty asked technical questions about Halo PC. This FAQ is located here:

After Halo was released to manufacturing but before it arrived on store shelves, the Halo team discovered a potential crashing issue when playing Halo multiplayer online. In order to guarantee the best possible experience for our customers we have issued an update that addresses this issue. Before you can
play Halo multiplayer online you will need to allow this update to install through the auto-install feature of Halo or by running haloupdate.exe from your Halo installation folder.